The following is an excerpt from the
book "Indian Wars Of Texas" By Mildred P. Mayhall. The
refrences to Ms Thomas Higgenbotham are note worthy in that after
Thomas Higgenbotham died in 1842, Levicy married Moses
Hesskew

Indian Wars Of Texas
By
Mildred P. Mayhall

The Council House Fight

We have set up our lodges in these groves
and swung our children from these boughs from time immemorial.
When the game beats away from us, we pull down our lodges and
move away, leaving no trace to frighten it and in a while it
comes back. But the white man comes and cuts down the trees,
building houses and fences and the buffaloes get frightened and
leave and never come back, and the Indians are left to starve,
or, if we follow the game, we trespass on the hunting ground of
other tribes and war ensues.

Following the wars against the Cherokees in
1839 (July 16-17, in Cherokee County and December on the San Saba
River), and the expulsion of one and The killing of another of
the Mexican agents among the Indians, Vicente Cordova and Manuel
Flores, with subsequent attacks against the Comanches, the
Republic of Texas decided to treat with the Comanches, secure the
white captives, and keep the Indians north and west of the
frontier line above Austin and San Antonio.

The capital of Texas at Austin, far north of
the center of population, laid out according to the wishes of
President Mirabeau B. Lamar,
was established in 1839, actually in view of the Comanches,
hunting and camping in the hills along the Colorado overlooking
the site of Austin from the north and west. Former President Sam
Houston was disgusted with the new frontier town as a capital,
open to attack by the Comanches and their allies. Houston favored
the new and prosperous town named after him and later when he
regained the presidency of the Republic, removed the seat of
government to Houston temporarily. Lamar wanted a centrally
located capital for the expanded Republic, from the Rio Grande to
the Sabine and claimed (but did not control)

-19-

all the area east of the Rio Grande, a long
stretch of land embracing a large part of New Mexico and
extending up to the 42nd Parallel. Squarely in the way of that
expansion were the Lipans, Mescaleros, and other Apaches, the
Comanches and their allies, the Kiowas and the Kiowa-Apaches, the
southern Cheyennes, and some of the Arapahoes.

Texas decided to make a peace with the
Comanches. Word was sent to the civil chiefs, Mocochocope (Old.
Owl) and Muguara,
of the Comanches, who wished a peace or truce because they were
losing too many of their young war chiefs in the constant Ranger
wars directed against them in the area north of San Antonio and
over to the Brazos.

The Legislature established the Rangers by law
in 1839, an effective small fighting force designed to fight the
Indians in the Indian manner, travelling as fast as the Indians
did, and virtually copying all of the Indian tactics. One point
of superiority for the Texans was the deft use of the gun. The
Comanches had fleeter horses but their arms were still the bow
and arrow, tomahawk, and lance; they had some guns and they
wanted more.

On January 30, 1840, Albert Sidney Johnston,
Secretary of War, notified Lieutenant Colonel William S. Fisher,
commanding the 1st Regiment of Infantry, that Colonel H. W.
Karnes reported that a group of Comanches visited San Antonio on
January 9, soliciting peace and offering to return their American
captives. In thirty days they promised to bring in their
principal chiefs to make the arrangements. Fisher was told that
if they brought in the prisoners, such was to be regarded as a
sincere desire for peace and that he was to state to them that
their happiness depended on good conduct shown toward the Texas
citizens and that they must stay in prescribed limits and abstain
from hostility on the frontier. Johnston said that citizens had a
right to occupy vacant land of the government and were not to be
interfered with by the Comanches. The Comanches were to
understand that they

20

were prohibited from entering the settlements.
He said:

Should the Comanche come in
without bringing with them the Prisoners, as it is
understood they have agreed to do, you will detain
them. Some of their number will be dispatched as
messengers to the tribe to inform them that those
detained, will be held as hostages until the
Prisoners are delivered up, when the hostages will be
released. It has been usual heretofore to give
presents; for the future, such custom will be
dispensed with.

You will designate and take
command of three companies of the 1st Regiment, who
will be immediately marched, to San Antonio.

President Lamar appointed commissioners and an
interpreter to meet with the Comanches in San Antonio on Tuesday,

March 19, 1840. Colonels William G. Cooke
(Quartermaster General and acting Secretary of War) and Hugh
McLeod (Adjutant General of the Texas Army) were deputized by the
government to conduct the treaty, assisted by Lieutenant Colonel
Fisher of the regular infantry. The Comanches had been expressly
told to bring in all of their white captives. It was estimated
that there were over two hundred captives among the various
Comanche bands, but the northern Comanches had not agreed to
treat. On March 19, the Comanches rode into San Antonio, brightly
painted and attired to attend the council -- in all sixty-five Comanches
-- men,
women, and children led by twelve chiefs and among them was the
civil chief, Muguara. This was the third time that the Comanches
had come in to talk about having traders sent to deal with them
in exchange for giving up captives. Traders who had gone among
them earlier had been killed because the Comanches thought they
had brought the smallpox to them, but the goods were kept. The
Comanches brought in only two prisoners: one young white girl
about sixteen years old and one small Mexican boy.

The Court House, called the Council House, a
one-story stone building with a flat roof and an earth floor,
adjoined the stone jail on the corner of Main Plaza and Calaboza
(Market) Street. The yard back of the Court House was later the
City Market on Market Street. The Indians and the

21

Commissioners met in a council in the Court
House with city and military authorities while the Indian women
and children remained in the Court House yard. Here Captain Tom
Howards (George T. Howard, later Indian Agent) Company of
Texas Rangers was stationed before the council met. Captain
Howard went into the building to watch the proceedings. 3

While the council inside proceeded, the Indian
boys amused themselves and casual onlookers by shooting arrows at
coins tossed by some of the Texans. Watching the group were two
women who lived near the Plaza, Mrs. Samuel Maverick and her
neighbor, Mrs. Higginbotham. (Who later married Moses Heskew)

The Indians demanded high prices for their
prisoners, specifically ammunition, vermilion, flannels, blankets
and other goods, with the promise of traders to be sent to them.
The Commissioners suspected treachery and were incensed over the
plight of Matilda Lockhart, the white girl captive.5
The Commissioners told the interpreter to tell the Comanches that
they would keep some of the chiefs as hostages, according to a
former agreement with Chief Muguara (Spirit Talker), until all
the captives were brought in, then all the captives would be
ransomed. The hostages would not be harmed, but if the Indians
started a fight, the soldiers would open fire. The interpreter
refused to do so, saying a fight would ensue. The Commissioners
insisted and the interpreter did so, then left the room.

As soon as the interpreter conveyed this
information, this ultimatum, to the Comanches, the Indians
shouted their war-whoops,
drew their bows, started shooting and tried to get out the doors.
Captain Howard ordered his soldiers (who had been ordered into
the Council room) to fire and Indians and whites rushed into the
square. Captain Howard was attacked

at the door by the Chief
Mue-war-rah (Muguara), who inflicted upon him a
severe wound in the side. The Indian, while
endeavoring to kill Capt. Howard, was shot down by
the sentinel.

22

The Indians tied in all directions with the
Texans pursuing them. The soldiers fired into the crowd and
killed both Indians and whites. Men ran to get guns while the
Indians dashed to the river. Some sought safety in houses. Fights
in the street resulted in death. None escaped. All of the
Comanches were accounted for thirty-three
killed and thirty-two caught and imprisoned. Among those killed
were the twelve chiefs including Chief Muguara. One of the chiefs
killed was the father of Sanaco (Buffalo Tar or Asphaltum), later
chief of the group of Peneteka Comanches who visited the Clear
Fork Reservation in 1856. Six Americans and one Mexican were
killed and ten Americans were wounded. The Council House meeting
ended tragically for both sides. It was a sorry blunder, as the
Texans were to learn later.

Mrs. Maverick said that as soon as the Indians in the
Courtyard heard the war-whoops inside, they realized what was
happening and turned their arrows against the crowd. Arrows were
shot into Judge Thompson and others near him before the crowd
knew what it meant. The two women fled and one Indian followed
Mrs. Maverick to her door. As she the door, she shouted to her
husband and her brother, are Indians." She said:

Three Indians had gotten in
through the gate on Soledad Street and were making direct for the
river. One had passed near Jinny Anderson ( Negress) our cook,
who stood bravely in front of the children, mine and hers, and I
heard her cry out to the Indian, "If you dont go
way from here Ill mash your head with this
rock!" The Indian .. . dashed down the bank into the river.
8

23

There Mrs. Mavericks brother followed,
shot, and killed him and shot another Indian who gained the far
bank.

On Soledad Street, Mrs. Maverick saw one Indian
wounded and dying and two dead nearby. Captain Lysander Wells
rode north on Soledad on a gaily-caparisoned horse and as he
reached the Veramendi House, an Indian sprang up behind him on
his horse and tried to snatch the bridle reins. The two men
fought on the horse. Wells finally placed his pistol against the
Indians body and shot; the Indian tumbled off the horse,
dead. Wells took out after other fleeing Indians. The frightened
Mrs. Maverick was admonished to get in the house before she was
killed.

Captain Mathew Caldwell, a famous Indian
fighter known as "Old Paint," was injured inside the
Court House when the affray began.
He was unarmed, but he grabbed a gun from a Comanche and killed
him with it, then beat another to death with the butt of the gun.
He was shot in the right leg by the soldiers first shots.
After breaking the gun, he backed up against the Court House wall
and continued to fight with rocks. In a few days, recuperating at
the Mavericks home, Old Paints leg was healed and he
was walking again.

Two Indians sought refuge in the kitchen house
of the Higginbothams back yard. They bolted the door and refused to
surrender. In the night, they were frightened out by balls of
cotton soaked in turpentine and ignited, being lowered from a
hole made in the roof. As one rushed out the door, his head was
split with an ax; the other was killed as he ran.

The Indian women dressed
and fought like the men, and could not be told apart ... Many
of them were repeatedly summoned to surrender, but
numbers refused and were killed.

It was, said Mrs. Maverick, a "day of
horrors.

24

The Council House Fight

Dr. Weideman, a German settler in San Antonio,
spent the night treating the injured. Lieutenant Thompson, shot
through the lungs, groaned all night and vomited blood. He was
not expected to live the night but he did and in a few weeks was
up walking
about.

The captured Indians were put in the jail, the
Calaboza. The day after the fight, a truce was made and a
Comanche woman, widow of a chief, was placed on a horse, given
provisions and sent to the Comanches to tell them of the fight
and the truce. She was told to tell them to bring in all their
captives, about fifteen Americans and several Mexicans according
to the information of Matilda Lockhart, in exchange for the
Imprisoned Comanches. The Comanche woman agreed and said that she
would return in five days, but the Americans allowed twelve days,
to the 28th. If she was not back with word by then, all the
hostages were to be executed.

Later the Comanche prisoners were removed from
the jail and taken to San Jose Mission where soldiers were
stationed. They did not suffer retaliation, although they
expected death and distrusted any who showed them kindness. After
a time they were removed to Camp Cooke (named after W. G. Cooke)
and were kept under guard. The guard was not strict and the
Indians fled as opportunities arose. A few were exchanged for a
couple of captives later. Some were taken into homes as servants,
but they, too, watched for an opportunity to run away, and soon
they were all gone, on their way back to their tribe.

A captive white boy, Booker L. Webster, was
returned to the whites by the Comanches in April. He and a
five-year-old white girl named Putnam had been adopted by
Comanche families. He related what happened when the Comanche
squaw returned to the tribe with the news of the fight at the
council. The Comanches cried and howled, cut themselves with
knives in mourning for their dead, and sacrificed horses for
several days. Then as a climax to their mourning, they

25

Indian Wars Of Texas

killed thirteen captives, sparing only the
adopted children, among them the Webster boy and the Putnam girl.
The captives were roasted over fires and tortured to death
with exquisite cruelties which the Comanches knew so well how to
inflict.

On March 28, Chief Isimanica (Hears the Wolf,
Howard calls him Isamini) and about 300 Comanches appeared at the
edge of San Antonio. Accompanied by one brave, Chief Isimanica,
almost naked and painted for war, rode into the square, circled
it, and rode down and back up Commerce Street, shouting insults
and challenging any one to fight. At Blacks Saloon, he
stopped, stood in the stirrups, and shouted his defiance. An
interpreter told him that the soldiers were at San Jose Mission,
to go there and find Colonel Fisher if he wanted a fight.

Chief Isimanica and his Comanches then went to
San Jose There they challenged Colonel Fisher, sick in bed, and
Captain Read,
next in command, to a fight. The captain explained that a
twelve-day truce had been made to exchange prisoners and would
not be broken. If the Comanches wished to remain three days, when
the truce was over, they would furnish them a fight. The chief
voiced his insults and then left. The soldiers could hardly be
restrained and some were ordered into the mission church to keep
them from starting a fight with the Comanches.

Hearing of this, Captain Lysander Wells called
Captain Read a coward. The result was a duel in which both men
were shot and killed. Read died immediately and Wells, in great
pain, died after some days.

The harshness shown the Comanches in the
council powwow was largely occasioned by the treatment they had
given Matilda Lockhart. When she was captured by the Comanches,
she was thirteen years old and her little sister, also captured,
was three. She had been with the Comanches two years. When the
Indians brought her into San Antonio to exchange

26

The Council House Fight

her for a large ransom, she was serving as a
herder, driving the extra Indian ponies.

While she waited for her brother to come and
take her home, she told the friendly women who helped bathe and
dress her and care for her some of her experiences as a captive.
She said that she felt utterly degraded," could never hold
up her head again, and that she wanted to hide away from curious
eyes. She said that there were fifteen other captives among the
same Comanche band. Two of these had been adopted and were
treated well, her little sister and Booker Webster.

Matilda Lockhart had been mistreated. Mrs.
Maverick said

Her head, arms and face were
full of bruises, and sores, and her nose
actually burnt off to the bone -- all
the fleshy end gone, and a great scab formed on the
end of the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and
denuded of flesh. She told a piteous tale of how
dreadfully the Indians had beaten her, and how they
would wake her from sleep by sticking a chunk of fire
to her flesh, especially to her nose, and how they
would shout and laugh like fiends when she cried Her
body had many scars from fire. . . 10

In a few days, Matilda was taken to her home by
her brother. Another Comanche captive came into San Antonio on
March 26. Mrs. Webster escaped from the Comanches, carrying her
three-year-old child on her back. As she appeared on the street,
people began to shout, Indios." But she shouted her story so
all could hear. She had been captured after an attack on Brushy
Creek (north of the site of Austin) in August of 1839. She
corroborated the facts given by Matilda Lockhart.

On April 3, two Comanches, a chief (Piava, a
crafty and treacherous Indian, according to Captain Tom Howard)
and a squaw, rode into San Antonio to the public square and

27

Indian Wars Of Texas

called out that the Comanches were holding
captives three miles from town and invited the Americans out to
complete the proposed
exchange agreed upon in the twelve days of truce. Scouts were
sent out and reported that the Indians were numerous and had only
a few captives. The chief was given gifts of bread, brown sugar
candy cones (peloncillo) and a beef and told that talks would
continue the next day.

On April 4, the chief Piava returned and agreed
to exchange two captives for two Indians. He was told that he
would be met at the edge of town. The captives were the Putnam
girl and a Mexican boy. These were exchanged for two Indians. The
Americans asked why they had not brought all the captives (not
knowing then of their death) and the Indians said they had only
one more. If they gave him up, they wanted to make a choice of
the Indians. The boy turned out to be Booker Webster, son of Mrs.
Webster already in San Antonio, who had escaped from the
Comanches. With him, they brought another Mexican boy and said
that these were all that they had. The chief then selected a
woman whose arm had been broken in the fight. He said that he
wanted her for his squaw, that her husband had been killed in the
fight, and that she owned many mules. The squaw refused this
offer of marriage, so the Texans refused to turn her over to him.
The chief was displeased with the Texans for so favoring a mere
woman but he finally selected another woman. For good measure, a
child went with her and also a blind Indian and the chief took
them off.

Captain Howard said that Dr. Booker and Mr. C.
Van Ness accompanied him (Howard) and several citizens, mounted
and armed, out to within three hundred yards of the Indian camp.
There they were met by Piava and Isamini (one of the principal
chiefs who had been to San Antonio in 1838 when General Johnston
was in command) and five or six warriors with bows strung.

28

The Council House Fight

Five prisoners were shown them and at times,
the consultation "almost reached blows." Finally they
agreed to exchange Mrs. Websters son, a Mexican girl, and
one other captive. They separated with the understanding that the
Indians would bring in the other prisoners and their captives
would be returned. 12

Then the Webster boy told the Texans of the
murder of the captives.

All told, seven captives had been returned to
San Antonio. Later one of the Mexican boys ran off and returned
to the Comanches. The Putnam five-year-old girl could not speak
English and cried to return to her Comanche mother. She, too, had
been mistreated. She was bruised and her nose was partly burned
off. After April, the Comanches who were imprisoned were not
carefully watched and they stole away and returned to their
tribe.

The Council House Fight left a bitter taste in
the mouths of the Comanches. San Antonio depended on its
"Minute Men" to chase
the Comanches whose reprisals were many and constant for their
losses in the Council House. The Minute Men had been organized in
San Antonio by Jack Hays to combat the constant Comanche raids.
Volunteers to pursue the Indians were notified by a flag that
waved on the Plaza In front of the CourtHouse and by the ringing
of the Cathedral bell.

They continued to hold their horses ready, just
as they had done in 1838 and in 1839.

Mrs. Maverick described the Minute Men thus:

In the stable we built on our house
lot, Mr. Maverick kept a fine-blooded horse, fastened by
a heavy padlocked chain to a mesquite-picket. The door of
the stable was securely locked also, for every precaution
was necessary to prevent his being stolen. This was the
"war horse." Mr. Maverick was a member of the
Volunteer Company of "Minute Men" commanded by
the

29

Indian Wars Of Texas

celebrated Jack Hays ... Each
volunteer kept a good horse, saddle, bridle and arms,
and a supply of coffee, salt, sugar and other
provisions ready at any time to start on fifteen
minutes warning, in pursuit of marauding Indians. At
a certain signal given by the Cathedral bell, the men
were off, in buckskin clothes and blankets responding
promptly to the call 13

The Council House Fight in the spring of 1840
was a fiasco. It resulted in no bettering of relations with the
Comanches and caused the loss of thirteen white captives. It was
later followed by a Comanche and Kiowa raid that extended to the
Gulf Coast with depredations against Linnville and Victoria. This
in turn resulted in more fights with the Comanches.